What do homeless vets look like?

What these pictures don’t show you is his past, and what he thinks about it: Buddies killed at war. His wife, or rather, his ex-wife. Their two kids, 2 and 9.

He told us about how his unit was one of the first to push into Iraq. And how, on their first day of combat, they wandered straight into a minefield. He later got a concussion from a mortar round. When he got out in 2010, he says, he had a hard time.

He’d suffered a traumatic brain injury and says his medical records indicate he’s 70 percent disabled with post-traumatic stress disorder.

He started having crying spells. He drank a lot, got a DUI, spent some time in jail. Now he lives in San Diego — along with many more homeless veterans.

“When you’re in the service you try not to get the help — ’cause you don’t want to be looked at as weak.

“I feel like I was a failure as a husband, and I don’t want to be that way as a father. I’ve got so much more life ahead of me. I gotta put all this bad stuff behind me, and learn to cope with what’s been going on with me.”

Messner, 40, was born in Panama and served in the Army from 1996-2001 as a medical-supply specialist. She worked in restaurants when she got out. Couldn’t pay rent. She and her boyfriend started having fights.

Then, she says, her house burned down. Child Protective Services took custody of her children. She’s been living in an RV park since then. That’s where she met another vet, who told her about ways she could get help.

“I used to keep pictures of my kids when they were little. All the pictures, every card they wrote me. All that is gone.”

It had been awhile since she’d had a portrait made. She came prepared to work it. (Note the accessories.)

Dearie, 55, saw himself smiling, but didn’t think he looked happy.

He served in the Marine Corps in the late ’70s, and has been homeless on and off over the years, which is not uncommon. He has diabetes and had a stroke in 2006. The last time he had a portrait made was decades ago, when he was in the Corps.

He preferred a wider shot.

Keone, 73, was born in Hawaii. He says he served two tours in the Army in Vietnam, doing special operations and reconnaissance.

Lately he’s been staying at St. Vincent de Paul Village, a nonprofit for homeless people in San Diego. He just had surgery on a blood clot in his right eye, hence the patch.

Dolas Jackson, 56, says he enlisted in the Marine Corps when he was 16. He has an apartment now, but was homeless for about five years. The last portraits he had taken were for his high school yearbook and his Marine Corps recruitment photo.

“I can see my age from 16 to 56. I’ve changed a lot.”

Baca felt better about how she looked when the breeze started blowing and she posed with her hands in her pockets. The last photo she’d had taken was pretty recently — at her wedding.

She did clerical work in the Navy in the late ’80s and never deployed to a war zone. After she got out, she ended up homeless for about 10 years. “Living in motels and stuff like that.” She’s had a house for a little over two years now.

These days, Fred E. Parks Jr. is happy to look a little fat in his pictures. It’s better than a photo his mother keeps as a reminder. “[It’s] a picture of me when I was doing drugs. I look like Skeletor’s little brother,” he says. “Now my mother has her son back.”

Parks was in the Army for about five years in the ‘80s. After he got out, he ended up homeless for about 25 years — addicted to crack, going by the name “Shorty.”

Eventually, and very recently, he got himself off the streets. He got married. Now that he’s clean, his mom takes his picture all the time, and insists he go by his birth name, including the middle initial.

Addington, 67, served with the Navy in Vietnam. He says he doesn’t remember the last photo he had taken, and didn’t seem to care which photo we used. He also didn’t seem too impressed by outreach efforts to homeless vets.

“Veterans Administration put on this show. Don’t get no medical help or nothing.”

He was a Marine for four years, then in the Army for three. And the story he tells is not unusual.

He was a medic in Iraq — part of a quick reaction force. High-pressured, fast-paced and intense, which doesn’t always translate to work back home.

After getting out of the service and returning to California, he learned that two friends he’d served with had committed suicide. He couldn’t keep a steady job. Couldn’t pay rent. Got in trouble with the law. Lost his EMT certification and his car. He couldn’t relate to people, and imagined what people thought of him.